Detour 2.0 – A New Chapter for the Audio Walking Tour App

We've been following Detour closely since it launched at the start of this year, and it's exciting to see the walking tour app's latest evolution. For those who don't know, the folks at Detour produce immersive and super-engaging audio walking tours of world cities, narrated by locals who have a deep connection to the location. (That's the skinniest of skinnies; you should go poke around their site to learn more.)

Initially, Detour focused on making individual tours around the San Francisco Bay Area, before expanding to another seven cities: New York, Austin, Barcelona, London, Paris, Berlin, and Marrakesh. Last week, Detour 2.0 was unveiled.

The big difference is that rather than offering tours as discrete units, Detour is now bundling all walks in a city together to create a comprehensive package. Each individual walking tour focuses on and elucidates a particular characteristic or theme within the city.

San Francisco is already available: 10 walks that cover such neighborhoods as Haight-Ashbury, the Castro, and North Beach; or, depending how you look at it, such topics as the Summer of Love, gay rights, and the Beats. Detour NYC, Chicago, and LA will be available next year, and all individual walks in other cities will remain accessible as free previews while fully fleshed out destination guides are being produced.

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Other changes in the latest iteration include free group sync, suggestions of things to do along the path of each tour, and a complete redesign both of the app and the underlying technology. This last point is significant, since it should allow for more innovative and flexible experiences. Go read the launch post to learn more.

iPhone users can download the app here. Those of you who, like me, are eagerly awaiting an Android release, it looks like early 2016 may be on the cards. Fingers crossed!